Last Saturday Scott Wolter went in search of the Ark of the Covenant, and the programming geniuses at H2 seemed to have missed a golden opportunity to pair that episode with this week’s Ancient Aliens, which also decided to take on the Ark as part of the History family of networks’ full-on slide into becoming the Christian heresy channel. From Jesus’ secret Freemason-Templar cult to Yahweh as an alien, from programs featuring Biblical analysis from one of Jesus’ alleged psychic descendants to a new horror series about Jesus’ wildest exorcisms, History and H2 are all heresy all the time. I miss the days when religion and history weren’t synonymous on TV.Ancient Aliens S06E10 “Aliens and the Lost Ark” is a recycling of age-old ancient astronaut claims, but it certainly attacks the very foundation of the Judeo-Christian worldview since the Ark is the sign and the seal of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel. Do Jews worship aliens? A man claiming to be a Rabbi, Ariel Bar Tzadok, is on this episode to talk about how Judaism is all about venerating alien technology, and he is apparently well-known in the world of Judaism for his extreme and unsubstantiated claims that the Hebrew Bible supports reincarnation, that aliens are invading our world, and that many other races of intelligent creatures walked the earth before man. His ideas seem more Theosophical than Judaic.

We open in the West Bank in July 2013 where archaeologists excavate holes at a settlement dating to around 1300 BCE, which biblical advocates claim held the poles that supported the Tabernacle covering the Ark of the Covenant, which is obviously an exaggeration beyond the evidence; post holes do not imply the existence of the Ark. Giorgio Tsoukalos tells us that the Ark of the Covenant is “one of the most fascinating and unexplored stories of the Bible,” which immediately marks him as a man unfamiliar with, literally, thousands of years of commentary on the Ark, expeditions to find the Ark, and speculation about the Ark. Graham Hancock appears to talk about The Sign and the Seal, his early-1990s book about the Ark, which he said “took me out of mainstream journalism.” It represents the latest developments the show is willing to contemplate. The show then summarizes the Exodus account of how God ordered the construction of the Ark to house the Tablets of the Law. Various allegedly ordained religious people who seem to think God was an alien offer little more than what the Bible says since, obviously, there isn’t anything else to go on. The narrator asks why the Ark should be constructed to “such exact specifications,” as though the highly variable “cubit” was mathematically precise. The narrator wants to know why the incorporeal God needs a physical throne. We next hear from Tsoukalos the age-old claim, famously made by Erich von Däniken, that Moses was irradiated by an alien; this is just like the radiation poisoning claim made by Hancock in Sign and the Seal. We continue on with the Exodus account of the Ark’s later movements and the many warnings that the Ark could not be touched or viewed. The show reveals its religious point of view by calling the Hebrew Bible the “Old Testament,” a Christian term. The narrator then tells us that the Ark held Aaron’s rod, which turned into a serpent, showing that no one on this show pays the least attention to their product because, while Aaron’s rod is the correct identification, a few weeks ago, the show incorrectly identified this same rod as belonging to Moses. William Henry calls the Ark of the Covenant a “tool kit” composed of rods, stones, gold, and manna. The show asserts that the Exodus account of forty years of wandering in the desert was literally true and therefore the Ark produced manna to feed the Israelites. Tsoukalos summarizes the old book The Manna Machine by George Sassoon and Rodney Dale, which claimed that a nuclear-powered device created food, and David Childress rhapsodizes that super-energy from the Ark “duplicated” whatever was put into the box, creating infinite food. Tsoukalos asserts that the Zohar’s “Ancient of Days” is a mistranslation of “The Transportable One with the Tanks.” This is utterly wrong. The Zohar wasn’t written until the 1200s CE, and the term Tsoukalos cites is from Daniel 7:9; the Zohar (3.136b) refers to “Ancient of Ancients.” The words involved have been studied and restudied and mean what they say; Tsoukalos’ translation is from a claim made by the authors of The Manna Machine and not supported by any mainstream scholarship. The authors claim that they and they alone have correctly translated the Zohar and other texts; they try to break down the term used in Daniel to make the words say “transport” and “vessels,” but to do so, they blatantly swap out words in a way that makes no linguistic sense, as Ancient Aliens Debunkeddescribed a couple of months ago. After the first break, we continue our very slow journey through the Ark’s biblical story. Joshua is taking the Ark across the Jordan, and the show proceeds to suggest that if we take the story that the Jordan stood still as truth, then the Ark used “high speed winds” to part the river. However, as a technical matter, the Biblical text (Joshua 3:16) simply states that the river stopped flowing for a time: “the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (that is, the Dead Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho.” The show confuses this with Moses parting the Red Sea. I frankly don’t know what to say next since the show is more or less literally just reading the Bible to us. We hear about the march around Jericho and the trumpets the brought down the walls, and we get some speculation that suggests without ever really saying so that the Ark sent out pressure waves to blow down the walls. Unable to even bother thinking about the fact that Jericho is a well-studied archaeological site, not to mention a thriving modern city, the show never bothers to even consider whether there is archaeological evidence for the destruction of the walls (the walls of Jericho fell centuries too early for the Biblical narrative to be literally true, according to radiocarbon dating), and instead it simply moves one—without even mentioning the sun standing still (Joshua 10:1-15), clearly a UFO! It feels like we’re going to get every mention of the Ark in the Bible; I’ve seen religious channel programming that was less reliant on reciting the Bible out loud. We next get the narrative from 1 Samuel when the Philistines capture the Ark and they die as a result. We hear that the Ark gave them radiation poisoning, and then we hear the narrative of how the Ark broke the statue of Dagon. I’m not really interested in summarizing the Bible, so I honestly don’t know how to review this. We are just listening to people reciting the Bible and telling us about the glory and grandeur of God, only the people pretending to be Jewish and Christian clerics are instead ancient astronaut theorists who apparently are trying to tell us that they worship the aliens. The show is painfully repetitive, and the same claim (“nuclear device”!) comes out over and over and over again, and Tsoukalos tells us that God is an atom bomb, apparently taking his cues from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The priests’ clothing (robes and breastplate) are supposedly meant to shield the body from radiation poisoning—as though thin layers of gold and cloth could substitute for lead. After the break, we go back to start cataloguing times when the Ark served as a hotline to God. Jason Martell shows us a full-scale model of the Ark of the Covenant and calls it an electrical capacitor. He views the model with UC Irvine physicist Michael Dennin, who seems thoroughly convinced that the Ark is an electrical device, or at least willing to pretend it is for the camera. He’s quite the media figure; in addition to many Ancient Aliens appearances, he also showed up in The Science of Superman to talk about how Superman might function in the real world of physics and Batman Tech to talk about the Caped Crusader’s weapons, so he’s no stranger to pretending bizarre claims are true and then rationalizing them with ways they “could” have been done if they were true. Citing the Talmud, Kathleen McGowan Coppens (a new name from her appearance on Bible Secrets Revealed last week, I guess) and David Childress talk about how “vibrations” from the Ark caused “vibrations” in the twelve stones of fire on the high priest’s breast plate, and Childress calls this “extraterrestrial Morse code.” They drop it before even bothering to finish the thought. After this, we talk about the loss of the Ark, and here we start to wander into Scott Wolter territory. Man, they are stretching this out beyond tolerance. After the break, we look at a Japanese Shinto ritual involving the carriage of a chest, and this goes back to a Lost Tribes of Israel claim made not, as the show suggests, in ancient times but in 1878, when Nicholas McLeod attempted to fit Japanese history into a scheme whereby biblical prophecies would be fulfilled in the east. He’s the one who picked and chose among many and varied rituals and customs to find “parallels” to presumed Israelite practices. It’s rather insulting to the Japanese to assert that their religion is bastardized Judaism, and it’s also depressing that a goodly number of Japanese came to adopt the colonialist ideology—if only to assert nationalist claims over Western religious artifacts. Next we get the Knights Templar, about whom we have heard far too much on this channel. McGowan Coppens discusses the Ark’s alleged passage to France, and she asserts that the Nazis went looking for the Ark in France (they did not—it was the Holy Grail they sought there; she seems to have confused this with Raiders of the Lost Ark), at no time revealing that she has for a decade asserted that she is herself the semi-divine descendant of Jesus Christ, receiver of visions from Mary Magdalene. Mike Bara tells us about the Templars transporting the Ark to Rosslyn Chapel, but none of this has anything to do with ancient aliens. The narrator asks if the Ark went to North America, and in what I am sorely tempted to read as Prometheus Entertainment’s attempt to bitch-slap Committee Films and America Unearthed for stealing their spotlight, the narrator simply dismisses this entire line of speculation with an arch “Perhaps.” You know America Unearthed is dumb when even Ancient Aliens finds its claims too stupid to bother discussing. We review the Ethiopian claim to hold the Ark of the Covenant in Axum, drawn from Graham Hancock’s work. No conclusions are drawn. After the final break, we listen to a recitation of the incident at the Dome of the Rock where some excavators tried to dig out the Ark of the Covenant, causing an interfaith conflict. The show is just burning time to get to the end of the hour. A long-debunked hoax UFO sighting in Jerusalem is asserted to be true by our alien-loving rabbi (who implies that the debunking is itself a coverup), and David Childress tells us that “some”—who exactly he never says—think the UFO that wasn’t actually there was recharging the Ark, which the rabbi says is in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah (Zech. 14) in which a “sonic vibration” splits the Mount of Olives and the Ark will arise from the hole. Read it yourself; he’s lying. There is nothing about the Ark or sonic vibrations in Zechariah’s prophecy. William Henry asserts that the Messiah is tied to the Ark and both will return to earth in the End of Days, but with no evidence presented, this is so much hot air. The show finishes with various talking heads telling us that if the Ark exits and if the Ark could be found and if the Ark is extraterrestrial, then we could have magic technology, an ET hotline, and a world-changing orgasm of extraterrestrial wonderment. The narrator reviews the many mutually-exclusive theories presented on the show and then gives a sop to religion by telling us that it may be none of these and is instead “beyond our comprehension,” which is to say, divine. We finish with another paean asking us to contemplate an animistic reunion with our alien ancestors.

I love the competing claims the show has made over the years. Wasn't it just a couple years ago Giorgio was saying the alien-inspired Templars hid the Ark in the pit at Oak Island?

And I still wonder, if these people really thing the Ark of the Covenant, this piece of alien technology capable of making tea, Earl Grey, hot, is really in some ratty church in Ethiopa, why don't they push past the elderly guy who is the only thing standing between them and it? Surely if they have the strength of their convictions it would be worth the criminal trespass charges to give the world replicator technology.

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Dylan

3/25/2016 02:50:26 am

If the ark is in Ethiopia?, out of respect to thair Christian and Jewish heritage no one would just forcefully go in an steal the ark,again lol

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Shane Sullivan

12/7/2013 07:25:22 am

"...Tsoukalos tells us that God is an atom bomb, apparently taking his cues from Beneath the Planet of the Apes."

You know, the videogame Fallout 3 had a atom bomb cult as well: The Church of the Children of the Atom. The game also has an add-on with aliens...

Maybe Tsoukalos and friends should start using videogames as a resource. Final Fantasy VII touches on AAT. Would anybody be terribly surprised if the Season 7 premier was, "Ancient Aliens: Jenova"?

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Will

12/7/2013 10:24:27 am

GTA V has a plethora of AAT and Templar conspiracy stuff...on on of the ads on the in game radio they actually reference the Annunaki!

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Shawn Flynn

12/7/2013 03:02:26 pm

Then Assassin's Creed is America Unearthed with a splash ancient aliens. Obviously Ubisoft, Bethesda and Rockstar are all part of an alien conspiracy.

Only Me

12/7/2013 07:49:56 am

Okay, so, the Ark is:

an atomic reactor
an electrical capacitor
a two-way, long-range communication device
a sonic weapon/generator
a wind turbine
a general-purpose carryall

Pretty impressive device, considering it was made of wood and gold.

Obviously, someone aligned with the show was aware of the article debunking the Manna Machine. So now, to add to the Ark's already impressive list of feats, it can now replicate matter. Tada! That solves the problem with the Manna Machine being too small to provide enough food for the wandering Israelites.

Really, this show *and* AU are making claims that are too stupid for discussion.

I'm less offended by AA than by AU for a variety of reasons. I believe that deep down, Ancient Aliens and its varied "experts" know that the entire project is fantasy entertainment. This is the kind of entertainment that 12 year old boys find fascinating but for adults its camp and a goof and probably something that has a decent following among stoners -- not "deep thinking" stoners but munchies and a cheap laugh stoners. Remember, Giorgio has no background in physical science, history, anthropology or religion. His background is in sports information and his previous job was promoting professional bodybuilding. He's an entertainer, pure and simple.

America Unearthed is a completely different animal and one with an insidious message. There's a reason why its followers tend to be
right wingnuts and white supremacists, as the underlying message of the show is that brown people had neither the intelligence nor the
ingenuity to live abundantly and peacefully in the contintental US without European influence. When you begin with an ironclad belief
in the superiority of one race above another, you don't need logic or evidence or even a cogent theory to get to your conclusion, its
foregone.

Wolter is to anthropology as Glenn Beck is to politics -- a paranoid conspiracy nutjob with just enough knowledge and carnival barker
ability to be dangerous on a soapbox.

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Travis

12/8/2013 08:12:04 am

Dan, I wish I could agree that AA is for young uneducated consumption, but it's one of the anchor shows on History and has been around for 6 years. The latest commercials promoting this season of AA are proof to me that Giorgio knows it's all a big joke.

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Gary

12/7/2013 12:09:53 pm

If they had bothered to actually read Exodus, they would have noticed that Manna began to fall before the Ark was built, so the idea of it being a holy bread machine doesn't work.

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Harry

12/7/2013 02:27:03 pm

If these were the kind of people who did serious research, they wouldn't be involved with a show like Ancient Aliens, a true insult to my intelligence. This show simply throws everything that might hint of "aliens" at the wall and seeing what sticks. I happen to be Jewish, but this episode strikes me as no more or less pathetic than anything else I've seen on the show, which isn't much; whenever I see it, it is clear what must be done - change the channel!

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charlie

12/8/2013 05:02:52 am

Harry,
YES! IF these people did any actual research, like read a book on the topic, they would not have anything to do with the show.
I am not a college grad, just a 2 year AS degree from community college and a technical school. I was a machinist before retirement, but I have always been curious about history. I got hooked on myths
when I watched the PBS shows with Joseph Campbell and read some of his books.
Real history is fascinating to me. The idea of ancient aliens was/is/could be a nice diversion for a while, in a "what if" sort of way. When I first read "Chariots of the Gods" I took it that way. Questions by the truck load. I didn't have access to research material at the time, I read the book while maintaining radio links to regimental HQ in Vietnam. At the time, I would read anything that came my way. Starved for reading materials and it was a book and it didn't make a huge impression at the time. Just a curiosity, and it should have stayed as such.
Sorry to ramble on so long.

Alien Master

12/7/2013 06:02:59 pm

Ancient Aliens simply has the b***s to come out and say the truth. Your all just blinded by so-called religions that just make you feel all warm and stupid inside.

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Only Me

12/7/2013 06:14:33 pm

And here's another poor soul with no sense of irony. Otherwise, you'd realize that AA is also a religion...with all the supernatural elements replaced with extra-terrestrials.

So, how warm and stupid do YOU feel now?

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Alien Master

12/7/2013 06:21:02 pm

Na, it's FACT. not BELIEF. Big difference.

AND....I feel better than you knowing it.

Only Me

12/7/2013 07:09:40 pm

Regardless of your feelings, it doesn't change reality. Absolutely nothing put forward by AA is factual. All their "evidence" has been examined and found wanting.

You may BELIEVE it is fact, and you are free to do so, but don't jump in here calling others blind and stupid because they don't share your belief.

Only Human

12/7/2013 07:25:10 pm

Considering the screen names I thought I would chime in....
Alien Master is right, unfortunately...
Don't you remember the great Apple White???
He revealed himself to be an alien and his cult followers boarded the ship behind the comet....oh wait, they are all buried in lot on a ranch in California.

Only Me

12/7/2013 07:35:05 pm

I think you're going to do just fine around here. :)

Gary

12/8/2013 12:30:43 am

Bells? Bongs? Bagels? Maybe the asterisks were a typo and you meant "bs".

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Brian Mclaughlin

12/8/2013 06:45:38 am

I had to laugh when I read: "Tsoukalos summarizes the old book The Manna Machine by George Sassoon and Rodney Dale, which claimed that a nuclear-powered device created food, and David Childress rhapsodizes that super-energy from the Ark “duplicated” whatever was put into the box, creating infinite food."

In the classic si-fi movie "Forbidden Planet" Robby the Robot supplants the Ark by creating an unlimited supply of scotch for the Erl Holliman character. He uses a pint of the stuff and Robby dutifully replicates the scotch in a seemingly endless supply of pint bottles!

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Andreas

12/8/2013 08:25:39 am

In ancient Semitic tribes such arcs were used as containers to transport stones. Not any stones but - if possible - meteorite stones. Such stones were seen as signs of the Gods. Even today, the Kaaba in Mecca is such a place containing a meteorite stone. This arc of covenant, which is assumed to contain two -stones- with the inscription of the ten commandments is a later invention.

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Mr. truth

12/10/2013 05:53:45 pm

Hey guys
Don't you remember? All they were saying was my theory, space agency theory, his theory, their theory, and a weird. Eyeball! No legitimate proof at all! I'm renameing it to ancient aliens "theory "-the ark ...
Oh yea, don't forget how many times the narrator said "what if"
I am fully sure (not theoriesing) that these people will do ANYTHING to prove that God is none other than,..yup.. an Alien

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Dave

4/21/2014 02:04:39 pm

The William Sinclair that built Rosslyn Chapel was not a Freemason. It was his Grandson William Sinclair that was a Mason. A leading masonic historian is a friend, he says there are NO Masonic symbols in Rosslyn Chapel. None, zero, zio, nada. Not a single one. The whole connection between the Templar Knights and Freemasonry is a theory, Not a fact. Sounds to me like supposition is being built on a foundation of unproven claims. Not really responsible theorizing.

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ashwin

4/3/2015 06:55:28 pm

i like the histroy of covenant ark. is there was a only one ark or it maybe more than one?

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The GRIM!

6/26/2015 10:27:27 pm

Stupid fucking show is for retards

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Pinchas

1/26/2016 01:20:38 pm

He may be a crack pot about many things but "Rabbi" Ariel Bar Tzadok is correct when he says that reincarnation is a part of Judaism. It's referenced in a wide number of places, especially the Zohar and other works of Kabbalah and, later, in Hassidism. Look it up: "gilgul haneshamot"

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Duke Mantee

4/2/2016 12:48:06 pm

Jason is a fucking closed minded dick (sorry but there is no other way to put it when someone claims to know what "God" wants, does or even who he is. One can profess a belief in something, but calling H2 the "heresy channel" pretty much is the same as Judgment (capital J) and is the modern equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition in that no opposing views, opinions or beliefs will be tolerated by the Holier Than Thou self proclaimed experts on religion, life, the universe and everything (rip Douglas Adams as these people would have you burning in "Hell" hypocritical Judges that they are in stark contrast to what Jesus taught. But then the Catholic Church would just burn anyone at the stake that disagreed with them and anyone that isn't blinded by religious zeal can plainly see that was about power and control on earth not any teaching found from Jesus in the Bible. But religious zealots know only one thing and that is to spew forth venom from at the slightest hint that some belief of theirs might not be true. If Angels were indeed aliens and not spiritual beings by some chance, one could easily see how much evil (like those tortuous murders of the Inquisition) comes to be from fucking morons that can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground. This error (sin) would matter little if they didn't have that very murderous history present in the very religion they seek to "defend" on this very web page.

May those that judge be judged by the (low) standards they use to judge others as Jesus taught. Amen. But ultimately forgive them Father for they know not of what they speak and even a fool is shown mercy by a God of LOVE unlike the God of hate they imagine and worship with so much zeal.

Ancient Aliens S06E10 “Aliens and the Lost Ark” is a recycling of age-old ancient astronaut claims, but it certainly attacks the very foundation of the Judeo-Christian worldview since the Ark is the sign and the seal of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel. Do Jews worship aliens? A man claiming to be a Rabbi, Ariel Bar Tzadok, is on this episode to talk about how Judaism is all about venerating alien technology, and he is apparently well-known in the world of Judaism for his extreme and unsubstantiated claims that the Hebrew Bible supports reincarnation, that aliens are invading our world, and that many other races of intelligent creatures walked the earth before man. His ideas seem more Theosophical than Judaic.
================================================

Just finished watching this episode and am a bet miffed that it is an endless, recycling of old shows.

Anyway; I just, want to add that, if you intend to do reviews here, you try to be a bet more open and enlightened than you seem to be in some of your reviews.

I am not a huge, huge, fan of this show, and get somewhat, aggravated myself, that they mix so much stuff together and seem to overlook so much else, if it does not tie into and support their theory.

BUT! That being said; the basic, core of the theory seems to be highly, plausible and stands regardless. And the ONLY, way that ALL, of Judaeo/Christian History makes ANY, sense at all, if one does not intend to treat it as pure, myth, regardless; is if you throw in the Ancient Alien Theory. Criticize as much as you like but surely, you see the sense in that?

I've decided to point out this paragraph because I would like to know what you are attempting to say here. If I'm to understand what the makers of this particular, episode are trying to say; they are not disagreeing with how these Ancient Hebrew UNDERSTOOD, God, the Supernatural and the Divine, they are simply, suggesting that, they did not UNDERSTAND, these things CORRECTLY. Which in itself, is quite, plausible.

And while all too, often they tend to go on with a lot of crazy, nonsense on this show, and make links which seem ludicrous indeed; they still, point out some good point, from time to time, as well, which stand, regardless. And this too, you should acknowledge when you critique this and all such shows. OK?

Just saying. That's all.

All My Best. Out.

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William

6/28/2016 03:39:59 pm

In reading Exodus 16:1-36 we learn that the Lord provided manna for the Israelites, with no mention of an ark. Only later in chapter 25:10-22
is the command given to construct the ark. Doesn't this blow the theory of some kind of ark powered machine?

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Dr. Digress

7/2/2017 11:40:37 pm

This is slightly off point, however, I'm puzzled why channels like History, TruTV, etc., are allowed to market all these easily refutable claims the way they do: as real, or possibly so (or and other truth'ish' derivative). Obviously, people are allowed to believe what they want; all a scientist can do is present evidence and findings. This pseudoscience, on the other hand, is (for the most part):
- Not veritable or based on any type of genuine scientific study.
- Clearly meant to make easy money (by having a charismatic sports promoter and well-established conspiracy theorists throw fantasy allegations around).
- Stupifying young and impressionable people as, let us face it; 'everyone' with a TV/decoder and/or an internet connection can access this easily.

Stating that this show's, AA, premise (that Aliens could have influenced us) could still be true is besides the point: This shows bases its 'what ifs' on 'absolutely nots', which would be okay if there was a disclaimer stating 'this is all based on bullshit, and not scientific, historical or archaeological fact'.

Let me (sorry, not sorry, for patronising) simplify with an example for the, thus far, unconvinced:
I state that every banana is a perfect square. Everyone who has seen one banana (or even partially seen one) will know this to be a lie. However, I, being an absolute bell-end, will just keep stating it as truth (likely based on my latest evidence perfected in GIMP/Photoshop) and gather followers/believers (read: sheep) until actial scientists have to waste their intellect and time, and refute me to avoid further confusing the "misguided".

On a lighter note: Where there is life, there is hope (I guess?)...

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